


with these wings, we fly towards the end

by wr1terza



Series: how to survive softly [1]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Pre-Dream SMP, Survival, give me more philza minecraft content you fools you absolute IDIOTS, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:54:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28705497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wr1terza/pseuds/wr1terza
Summary: The world does not survive the end.It stops, it resets, and it learns to live again.And Philza dies over, and over, and over again.-[ A small piece about how Philza braves the world he was never meant to live in. ]
Series: how to survive softly [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2104209
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28





	with these wings, we fly towards the end

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE:
> 
> This is the "character" Phil.  
> This is not the real person Phil, because that would be terribly sad and weird.  
> No shipping is intended.  
> Follow me @wr1terza on twitter!

(He watched the world end a thousand times.)

He’s on the hilltop of a canvas of purple-red mountains, feeling the sun burn and settle on his skin. He’s always run cold. Even ice freezes and hardens on his touch. So sitting here, as the sun yawns and shimmers-- he enjoys the feeling of living softly. The mushrooms are moist under his hands. He clasps one. Its stem stands tall under his grip, the scent gracing the air. It’ll be good for a stew. He’ll have to find a red one, later. For now, he stands up and opens his basket. Woven from lily pads and stalks and just about everything he could grab from the edges of the swamps, it’s his only trusted companion.

In this silent world, it’s all he can get.

He leaves the warmth and dips into the fertile, moist dips of the biome. He climbs down, sandals sliding and hat rustling, with the heat clinging to his clothes. He recalls the first time he scaled the sides of the steep mushroom mountains. He’d been an idiot then -- Braving the unknown world, he slipped off his sandals and climbed barefoot. But he never reached the top. And if he moves a certain way, now, his back still flares in protest. The body never forgets; even if his mind does. His sandals are the unsteady barriers between his feet and the sly mycelium oozing frigid slick magenta. They get the job done better than whatever he can make now.

They’re symbols of a different time. 

A time where shoes -- not yet boots -- weren’t made for resilience. 

_Fashion_ , he remembers, in the way that an adult recalls their first memory.

He makes it down the mountain.

Earthy umami clouds in the air as he tests another mushroom. It’s red. He holds it in his palm lighter than he should. It’s not heavy -- critically so. It probably doesn’t weigh any more than the pink and yellow flowers tied into his bag. 

Inventory management is crucial. There are no backpacks-- 

Shulker boxes, which are lightyears away. 

Ender chests, which steal part of his soul each time he opens one.

And the little lily pad bag, decomposing slowly.

“I’ll bring ya home, little buddy,” He says, and the mellow air wraps around his shoulder.

He eventually finds a sturdier red mushroom and crafts a couple bowls. The ocean is silent against the mycelium edges, and he knows too the ocean fears the stains of purple whispering of damage magic. He sips his stew as he stares at the sun steadily rising in the sky. Breakfast food has lost its meaning, alongside fashion,, and people. A mooshroom moos in the distance, and a smile cracks onto his face. Animals are the last artifact. Slowly, surely, steadily--

He remembered waking up again, fire retreating inside him, and gasping at the sight of a horse.

And now? Foxes, rabbits, donkeys, turtles, dolphins, _tropical_ fish-- 

The world is coming alive.

So why does it feel like he’s dying?

Phil stares at the empty bowl in his hands.

He looks at the sea, and he throws it.

He leaves the thoughts of fungus-speckled cows and hissing dirt blocks behind him as he mounts the single sturdy boat in his arsenal.

It’s a well-made acacia boat -- wood dryer than the home it comes from, wood sturdier enough to withstand the windswept air of the passing desert biome. It isn’t the prettiest thing, far from it. But the villagers he had met there had _almost_ seemed sentient. They had given him a look when he forked over glistening emeralds. The librarian had sparkled a brilliant green after he traded an armful of books. It had excited him, until he accidentally traded a palm of spider eyes for a sack of paper, and the huntsman sparkled the same.

Emeralds were his favorite, once.

The ocean is nicer, Phil decides. Nicer than the trickster acacia biomes or the empty-eyed villagers. He’ll take dolphins over frisky cats -- They never left his chest alone.

He rows, and rows, and rows, and the still ocean doesn’t bother him anymore. He doesn’t have to worry about disaster. Besides falling into the depths of a ravine -- he’s gotten quite good at this _falling_ \-- and burning inside a lava pit, nature seldom startles him. Tsunamis, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes… They exist only in his memory. And alongside those, the sounds of waves, of the tides, and of the pelicans flying across the horizon. In comparison, the ocean of _this_ world is nothing but the constant rowing of the oars and his own breath. 

“It’s not that bad,” He tries. 

But there is no summer wind to brush up against his cheek, and no one is none the wiser.

He spots a structure hidden in the water. He takes one good look at his clothes and frowns. Biting down on his lip, he leans over as much as he can manage. Drowned cluster, and his fingers reach for his sword. In this life, it’s simply an iron sword -- Not a knife, or the enchanted netherrite he had barely managed to enjoy before being slaughtered by a pack of Hoglin. A rush of heat boils in his blood. His fingers twitch. He swallows it down. _Keep going_ , he tells himself, _keep going because there’s no choice but to_.

He jumps off the boat.

Resurfacing with two emeralds, a couple gold ingots-- And a _Buried Treasure Map_. He took a good look at it and mustered a laugh. He threw his loot into his bag and sped off in its direction. The world blurred around him. The water slipped off his clothes.

He spots the sandy haven ahead, and his elbows cry out in relief. He settles his boat to its coastline. Every step on the beachy terrain is heat-soaked, the sun beating down on his neck in seconds. The chill dissipates, and he stares down at his map. He likes to think _this_ \- this little game - is the world’s silent apology. A numberless years searching and seeking and finding and discovering and dying and dying -- Once upon a time, his heart soared at this new _Mansion Explorer Map_. Once upon a time, he laid in bed, nerves electric and _alive_ , waiting until the sun would come up. He had almost braved the night. That time he had been prepared. Diamond armor glistened and sparkled, his sword burning with the sun, crossbow laced with firework rockets.

He snatched two cows of their milk, stole absent farmers’ wheat, and cut down stalks and stalks up sugarcane. He sweated under the sun. He went farther. He hiked into the jungle, axed down a tree of all its cocoa beans. He went in the night. His armor - beat and broken. His tools - cracked and shattered. But he had _it_. He had the map. 

_Mansions_ , he reasoned, _are for people to live in_.

An armful of cake, cookies, diamonds, books, emeralds, dogs, cats, armor, warm woven beds and still-hot, still-forged netherrite blade.

_Someone_ , he assured, _will wait for me there._

The arrival ended with screams, burns, Vexes, cuts, flames, fire, burning, and burning,and his skin hardened, still-cold, still- _alive_. 

He never went again.

(No matter what, he finds them. Always. Those times, he has a flint and steel. And he _burns_ and burns and burns until fear chokes him back. Those times, he ends alive. Those times, he doesn’t cry.)

He squats down and shovels out the treasure. It’s more interesting than the sea tower, he notes.. He tucks the prismarine and Heart of the Sea into his lily-pad bag, and leaves.

From the beachline, he drifted to one of the hundreds of forest biomes, spotting light and fire and heading towards it.

It’s no surprise that Zombies lurk.

He peeks at them through the birch trees, staring down at the village lights. Not a single villager screams. He snorts. All he hears are the groans from the zombies and the sound of doors crumbling. Admittedly, it wasn’t the best village. The librarian didn’t take paper for emeralds and he was stuck _Mending_ -less. Repairing iron armor got tedious after a while.

Logically, he should get diamond armor.

His eyes flicker to the lily-pad bag. 

_We’ll need a base_ , his mind tells him, and he grimaces. He tugs the lily-pad closer to his chest. Bases sounded like houses, and houses sounded like _home_ , and the only home he has is worlds away.

Distance makes the heart fonder, but he would live a million lives, take a hundred deaths, lose his every body, all of it-- just for a chance to go back. Part of him is scared frozen. What if _that_ world never existed? 

A zombie shriek ruptures the air.

Phil darts inside the village, ducking to the side of one of the garden plots. He peeks over just as a villager morphs into another zombie. His heart thumps. Clicking his tongue, he curses this life’s unusual brokeness. A zombie villager would do wonders for his trading. Taking advantage of a non-sentient villager didn’t bother him so much anymore. A lot of things don’t. He could make a list, but that’s a waste of paper and an ink sac, and the only thing he wants to write down brings nothing but a wave of bad memories.

Another zombie shriek.

He tenses.

He whips his head around. Last time he checked, the zombies were around the blacksmith. Not here. 

_I’m freaking out for no reason there_ , he breathes. There’s nothing behind him. He can’t die just yet.

“ _Fuck_ ,” He slouches, relief pouring through his bones. He closes his eyes.

He can feel the moon, hear the zombified villagers shrieking, and taste the night air on his lips.

It’s alright, until it’s not, and the zombie comes in before Philza can open his eyes.

_“No offense, Phil, but it kinda looks ugly.”_

_Phil laughs, his axe missing by a mile. He brings the back of his hand up to swipe at the sweat on his forehead. “Oh, really, Techno? I thought you said my farms were cool.”_

_“Cool,” Techno -- the Pig -- shrugs and Phil can practically see the disgust in the way he does it, “But not when they’re right in the center of my lawn.”_

_“Now you’re talking like an old man.”_

_“Oh please, that title goes to you, grandpa,” Techno retorts so violently another laugh spills out of Phil before he could hold it in._

_“You’re calling me old?”_

_“Ancient,” Techno replies, and Phil pretends not to hear the stifled laugh at the end of it._

_Phil digs the axe into the side of the log and looks up at the stars._

_“Can’t argue with you on that one, bud.”_

_This’ll never change-- Phil decides, and the thought sounds so right and perfect, his heart blossoming into a pillow of warmth-- not if he can help it._

_And the night ends with Techno’s "So you agree it’s ugly? Great." and a booming laugh that disappears into the night._


End file.
